SoundCloud Recordings

Tag: narrative

Here is a short story told from different points of view, but could be the same person. It doesn’t have to be, I’ll leave it all up to you, dear reader! Please excuse the formatting of paragraph breaks – I am struggling to get WordPress to agree how many lines in Word constitutes a line […]

This little ramble is inspired by a memory: my mother once said that she couldn’t understand why Latin – a ‘dead language’- was taught in schools, and why anyone would want to learn anything so useless. Latin is embedded in English grammar along with other linguistic influences, and is our ancient language of prayer and […]

Born in the mid 20th century, in a not very bookish household, my earliest literary influences were Enid Blyton and comics. Especially comics, which I could buy for myself at pocket money prices from the corner shop, long before I was old enough to take myself off to a library. The comic format seems an obvious […]

Why is creative writing such hard work? Part of the reason is that writers deal in emotions and it is intense. Fiction is ‘real’ when the emotions are evoked. It is not just about story and plot – that is more like a game of logic, which in itself is challenging. Emotions – even fictional […]

A cold February afternoon twenty years ago, when visiting a hospice where my father was dying, I met a man of 60 who was in respite care, but was terminally ill. He seemed calm and content. ‘I’ve had a good life’, he said. He had no regrets about dying. I was a young mother with […]

We have not only survived another Christmas and end/beginning of a year but also the 21st of December 2012. Endings are beginnings. The Mayans encoded that into their calendars – they reset them each new cycle. Of course, some preferred to interpret the Mayan ‘prophecy’ in terms of an apocalypse. There are always anti-Pollyannas who have a death […]

People often talk of the ‘universality’ of stories, how they transcend time and culture with common themes that entertain, instruct and link societies. Perhaps the love of stories is a defining characteristic of humankind. Ancient traditions of storytelling are physical – by the use of spoken and sung language, as a fireside activity by a […]

Most women know what an LBD is. Of course, it the mystical, alluring ‘Little Black Dress’. Every woman needs one. In the quest for the perfect LBD, a helpful sales assistant with quickly point out – ‘It looks nothing on the hanger’ (except the price, of course). ‘It needs to be worn to be appreciated’. Try […]

I am posting a little short story to mark National Short Story Week. More of my favourite motifs – flowers. There is a compost heap too. This story is featured in the webzine ‘Word Bohemia’ – http://wordbohemia.co.uk/fiction/nuns-and-harlots-by-elizabeth-stott/ Nuns and Harlots Sarah would buy flowers and not take care of them, just plonking them in a […]

The night before we left England, we stayed at Nan’s. My younger sister and I slept in her sewing room in the old bed in the corner. We slept in our underwear, tucked beneath the eiderdown, watching the shadows of wires strung like rigging from the light socket. There was a commode to save us […]